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I have spent a bit of time trawling through the RLWC website, specifically to get an idea of just where all these players from essentially non-league playing participant countries come from.
The answer suggests that the organisers are trying to pull off one of the biggest hoaxes in international sport. I did a detailed analysis of players’ countries of origin and their club – or country where they play their sport domestically – directly from the RLWC website.
What it shows is that the event is basically an end of year junket for Australian born and/or based players, who comprise a substantial portion of at least five of the nine teams where league is played very little – or, indeed, is virtually unknown.
The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Chief Sports Writer Andrew Webster opined a week or so ago that the performance of the USA Tomahawks had been quite a surprise.
It’s perhaps not such a surprise when 15 of their 23 players (or 16, if Clint Newton is included as an Aussie) were born in Australia, New Zealand or Samoa, and play mainly in the NRL.
However an even bigger fraud can be seen with the “Italian” team, with 21 of 24 players born in Australia while the same number play league anywhere but Italy.
The same applies – albeit to a lesser degree – to Ireland, Scotland and Fiji. And in the case of the non-Australians in the British teams that aren’t England, it is interesting to see that none show their places of birth as Ireland/Scotland/Wales, but rather “Britain”.
This makes me think that most of these guys are actually English, as suggested by the mainly English Super League clubs for whom they play.
I suggest it is time for the international rugby league to ‘fess up. Stop trying to pretend that league is anything more than a game propped up by the NRL in Australia and the Super League in northern England, and stop the RLWC charade.
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